Dalila Bovet

Associate professor

Phone : (33)1.40.97.74.80

Mail : dbovet@parisnanterre.fr

Research interests

I began my research with studies on categorisation and social cognition in primates, inspired by the « Machiavellian intelligence » hypothesis; this hypothesis suggests that cognitive abilities in primates are particularly developed as an adaptation to the complexity of their social life.

Since 2002, I have been studying social cognition in birds. Some birds, like parrots and corvids, live in social groups with complex relationships and recent work suggests that these birds are capable of complex cognitive abilities thought to be exclusive to primates. Moreover, parrots can use learned human words in an appropriate context to name various objects. Such elaborate cognitive and imitative abilities supported by non-mammalian brains make parrots an interesting model for the study of cognitive processes and their evolution, especially in the social domain, which seems particularly favourable.

Deputte, B.L. & Bovet, D. 2002. Are magabeys able to match faces and vocalizations of individual conspecifics? Caring for Primates. Abstracts of the XIXth congress of the International Primatological Society. Beijing: Mammalogical Society of China.

Bovet, D. & Vauclair, J. Comparing the categorization and abstraction abilities of baboons and three-year-old children. First International Workshop for Young Psychologists "Evolution and Development of Cognition" Kyoto, Japon (July 2003).